


The River Meets the Sea

by Tamoline



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Gen, Trans Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 23:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16942956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: Defiant contemplates making some change





	The River Meets the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Kithri and FrustratedFreeboota for betaing

She concentrated on refining the prosthetic in front of her. If she reduced the width of the wrist joint by five millimetres, what would she lose? Hmm, she could reduce the integrity of the joint by five percent — it’d still be stronger than the adjoining mechanisms — and if she reduced the width of the attached hand appropriately, there would be less mechanisms she could fit in, so she could reduce the size of the artificial nerve cluster as well. Which would mean that it’d be easier to protect it, and lead to greater overall flexibility and responsiveness.

Yes, she thought, unable to help a mocking tone from entering her internal monologue. Sure, justify it to yourself like that.

She pushed herself back into her chair, leaning back so she was staring at the ceiling, and rubbed her face, fingers trailing from weak flesh to smoothly engineered metal and plastic.

Honestly, she’d never really thought about this, growing up.

Well, she’d thought about being a cape, of course. They were bright, they were new, they had abilities that had previously only belonged in comic books. There had been a sense of optimism. They could save the world! Who hadn’t wanted to be one?

But not really the other thing. Sure, she’d snuck some of her mother’s books that she’d left lying around, about romance and finding the one. But she’d been a voracious reader and why wouldn’t she want to read them, especially as they could leave a warm glow in her stomach? Even as natural caution had meant that she’d kept that fact carefully concealed and of course denounced anything with a hint of romance to her friends. It hadn’t been as though she’d tried on makeup or women’s clothes… but then again it hadn’t been as though her mother had really gone in for those sorts of things herself.

And sure, the cape persona she dreamed up might have happened to have been female, but, honestly, the fact that the persona had the powers of Scion and could go around fixing all the problems of the world had been the thing she’d concentrated on most.

Well, in the increasingly rare moments of time she’d had to think about anything impractical up until she’d triggered, of course. And after that, there had been no time for dreams at all.

“Colin?” came Dragon’s gently prodding voice from the speaker, and she couldn’t help flinching a little at the reminder of who everyone thought she was. Even if it was utterly ridiculous that she felt that way. “Is your new arm finished?”

She flicked her eyes towards the clock. She’d been wool gathering for over 300 seconds. Unacceptable. No wonder Dragon had checked in on her.

She didn’t know whether or not she had imagined the note of disapproval in Dragon’s voice. Dragon didn’t know, couldn’t know, how much of relief it had been to leave parts of herself behind, to be able to finally have an excuse to have some input into how she looked, even as there was always that voice in the back of her head, urging caution, saying she couldn’t do too much, or they’d know.

Not that it mattered. What had she even been thinking, to even contemplate prototyping a more slender arm? It would be weaker, less resilient, be able to pack less in when everything, _anything_ , could make difference between success and failure, life and death.

Her finger hovered over the delete key for the changes she’d made, as though tottering on the precipice between yes and no… before she instead clicked the mouse to send it to Dragon instead.

“What do you think?” she asked, resisting the urge to swallow nervously. It wasn’t as though Dragon would know it meant anything after all. It was just a simple idea, nothing anyone would suspect…

“Going for a more nimble design?” Dragon asked, a joking tone in her voice.

She felt simultaneous relief and disappointment. “Yes,” she said. “After all, external components are far more modular than something I’d have to rebuild the arm to replace.”

“Good,” said Dragon. “I like it.”

She tried and failed not to feel a warm glow, as though Dragon was approving of, well…

Even when she had become vaguely aware of her desires to look more feminine in her twenties, in between the far more serious affairs of cape life it had never seemed that urgent. Certainly not at first, when it had been an idle fancy, quickly dismissed in favour of whatever problem was at hand. 

Later, it had tended to linger in unguarded moments; a wish that she could just look that way. But the reality was always more complicated and difficult. Any surgery, if she wanted it, would take her out of commission for weeks or even months without parahuman intervention, and even just the hormones would make it that little bit harder for her to retain her upper body strength, so vital in her cape work.

Besides, she didn’t exactly have a womanly figure, and just the thought of trying to make that kind of change in Brockton Bay… well, it probably wouldn’t help her authority in the local area, nor her chances of promotion. She was well aware of how people would read her attitude if she was known to be a woman. And that wasn’t even figuring the lower rates of promotion for women in general even amongst the Protectorate. 

And she had a brand, even it was a gendered name, no matter how it began to rub her a little raw as the years went on. Her face, her beard, had been the worst of it, but even that hadn’t been too bad. She’d just disassociated from her appearance, just coming to view it as another tool in her belt, her facial hair just another device that needed regular maintenance. Like her body, as corded and masculine as it was.

Had she really wanted to jeopardise her career, her everything for something so insignificant as how people saw her?

Well, she’d managed to do that anyway, for completely different reasons as it turned out.

And now this desire for change, to change, to truly show herself suddenly felt like a current that threatened to wash her out to sea. She didn’t have _time_ for this. She had a purpose, already a reason to reforge herself into the most deadly weapon possible, to hunt down the Slaughterhouse 9 and any other such threat that needed attending to.

And Dragon. Dragon had trusted her with so much already, but… Dragon was as human a soul as she’d known, but being human came with judgements. This thing between them was still so new, so fragile, and Dragon had fallen in love with someone she’d thought was a man…

It was that last thought that decided her. She might be utterly dependent on Dragon’s good will these days, but if there was anyone who deserved to know about this, to make her own informed decision about who… Defiant -- not Armsmaster, not any more -- was, it was Dragon.

This time she couldn’t help swallowing, but she brought up a new file, and started sketching out a new device, an implant. Fairly conventional in some ways, at least at the start. A way to monitor blood hormone levels and regulate them, injecting oestrogen and t-blocker as needed. Of course inspiration took her, and she quickly began adding refinements - ways to adjust adrenaline levels, to boost the desirable qualities whilst minimising the downsides, and a few more odd and ends, but that was at its core. Something that no tinker of Dragon’s calibre could possibly miss.

She cleared her throat and spoke again, certain that Dragon would be keeping an ear out for her, as always. “There is another thing that I’d like you to take a look at,” she said, cursing herself for the hesitancy that she couldn’t stop creeping into her voice.

“Oh?” Dragon said, innocent curiosity in her voice. “Let me see it then.”

She clicked the button to send it to her, and awaited Dragon’s response.


End file.
